Essay on The Role of Men in Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born

The fight against sexism is not a new fight. Women have been fighting for equal rights, as well as fighting for their lives, culture, and values to be just as important as men's. On August 18, 1920, women were granted the right to vote; but this was only the beginning. From then to now, the role of women in society has significantly changed due to women standing up for their rights at protests and rallies, as well as on social media. While “The Good Wife’s Guide” focused on the promotion of the traditional gender role of women and defined appropriate emotions for women, “The Revolt of ‘Mother,’” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, represents the start of the resistance of the traditional gender role of women that we see in society today.

Throughout this course, we learned that women’s studies originated as a concern at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). In the past, men had more privileges than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs has divergent female

“The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood.” This quote from Margaret Sanger highlights many first wave feminists views about the restrictions of motherhood, marriage, and household responsibilities. Many women saw being a mother as a chore or as something out of their control. Sanger fought these restrictions through bringing birth control to the general public who suffered from poverty due to large families. Others, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, wrote social critiques in her texts “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Herland to bring attention to how society treats women and ideally how motherhood should be. Both of these women believed motherhood was a responsibility of women and they should take it more seriously to create better future generations. This goes beyond the suffrage and equality movement because it dictated that women’s sexual emancipation was equally important as women’s legal emancipation. Being a mother was considered a woman’s most crucial task at this time, therefore the power behind female sexual education and birth control challenged society to feminist.

“Look at us! We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion; this idea that you have to settle down and resign from life.” (April Wheeler, Revolutionary Road). It has become a society norm that women are meant to serve housewives; to cook, clean, garden, and nurture children, even though they are much more capable of other things. The role of women is greatly overseen, as they are not perceived to be of their full potential, rather than as societies idealistic expectation. This is because men and those who are wealthy are unable to look past gender and accept women as of equal significance.

Due to primary socialisation, the children in the family would then be socialised into their gender roles so then when their time comes to marry and have children, this family structure will continue: the male has the instrumental role and the woman has the expressive role. To contradict with this view from Parsons’, the feminist theory would challenge this view when considering the inequality which comes of this. One argument made by feminists is to do with the oppression which women have dealt with for many years due to their somewhat, ascribed role of being inferior to men, up until around the 1960’s.

Women have been alienated from their rights as workers and citizens but also have been deprived from fulfilling their roles as wives and mothers because they don’t have political representation. The concept of militant motherhood explains that because women have been alienated from almost all their rights their will to thrive as mothers has motivated them to demand the equal rights they deserve. Therefore women united their collective identities as wives and mothers and demanded the political representation they deserved as citizens (Richard Stahler-Sholk et al, 145). This concept operates within women’s social movements because since they all share one collective identity regardless of what they are demanding they are all interconnected by

Whatever the women taught the new children that she had, was in the mother’s control. This is a way in which women had almost full control of society leading up to these generations. Women finally

Inequality between different groups of people within the United States is concerning for many sociologists and society in general. One of the main inequalities throughout the United States is gender inequality. Gender inequity is found in all past and present societies. It takes the form of patriarchy. From the patriarchal point of view, gender inequality can be traced back to biological differences in early societies (“Steven Goldberg on Patriarchy” 2006). This inequality is present in society through many different forms, including job segregation, the gender pay gap, and a great difference in women’s political representation (Joan Acker, 1989).

For centuries women had had to bow to men they were taught never to speak unless called upon or spoken to. That their sole purpose in life was to be a homemaker; a servant to the men in their lives fathers, brothers, sons. As time progressed women began to fight for their right to receive equal rights, education and vote. But that wasn’t enough in the year 2013 women still made eighty cents to every man’s dollar but that all changed one day. Women who were sick of being oppressed had risen up against the male chauvinism within society of the united states.The first measure was to take all men out of all positions of decision-making power immediately, and of any kind of social, professional position whatsoever. The men of society were

In this book she has helped the reader understand how women help in shifting and creating the world that we know today.

In American culture, majority people still think women should focus on children and families, and some mainstream ideologies always ignore women’s status. I use Levinson’s adult development theory as an example. This theory describes white male’s orbit of life, and Levinson use 4 eras of age to explain people’s lives. This is a very traditional theory, but Levinson doesn’t include women’s differences. Women’s physiological and psychological changes are differ from men. In this case, many scholar against this traditional theory and improve it a lot. From that, culture need to attach importance to women, even majority people think that women are less gripping than men. In culture of history, minority people absorbed the concept of ‘Everyone is equal’, and fight for oppressed groups’ rights. Majority people not hold the truth all the time, on the contrary, they often make mistakes in front of the

Throughout history and today, we women are constant victims of stereotyping from our society. Certain “rules” have to be followed and certain “ideal” women images have to be kept. We are raised in a way to fill certain position where the society wants us to be and as a result, the opportunities are always limited for us and ideas of our importance in the society are diminishing. Even though women gained some independence, where women can work and take various position in society, the society’s idea of typical role of women never seem to change.

Not only are woman subjected to society norms based on their personality characteristics, but also on their life choices and “domestic responsibilities” questions arise for woman like “who will care for you children and husband”. Montague Kern and Paige P. Edley state that women will continue to be “criticized for abandoning their traditional family roles” (1). This topic is not something that is brought up to their male counterparts. I don’t believe I have ever heard a man be questioned on who was going to assume the responsibility of raising their children. So until society genuinely accepts that raising children and other domestic issues are shared endeavors, then women will continue to face this barrier. (Robson, 208)

For the most part, women during this time have a very hard time acclimating to society’s standards and being treated as equal, especially by men. Whether they like it or not, the prejudice held against women in the hearts of the patriarchal society pulls them down and makes it hard to be treated equally, even if a person is born in a wealthy, high-class family. The discrimination only gets worse for those

Throughout history, women have been seen in many different lights. From a woman’s perspective she is strong, smart, helpful and equal to men. In the eyes of men, she is seen as the weaker being, the housewife, and the caretaker. By looking at the following pieces of writing, one can see that through the centuries, women have struggled to break out of the mold that man had put her in and make themselves known in society as important.